


Places and Moments

by rainydayrambling



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydayrambling/pseuds/rainydayrambling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan can't sleep, so he goes to see Adam.  Things heat up a bit, as they're wont to do when teenagers find each other alone late at night  -- intense and peaceful -- but there's always something lurking beneath their surfaces.</p>
<p>Just a small moment of intimacy, though nothing especially graphic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Places and Moments

Ronan found Adam pacing in his St. Agnes apartment. He had known not to ask Adam to move into Monmouth, even after the kiss. Even after lots of kisses. But he came to St. Agnes even more often now, spent the night here almost as much as he slept in his own bed.

Tonight it was late, because he had tried to sleep in his own bed and hadn’t been able to, so he came to the church, knocked on Adam’s door, and took Adam’s mumbled response as an invitation.

But Adam was pacing, his hands on his head, running back and forth through his hair.

Ronan stood still in the doorway. “Bad time?” he said.

Adam didn’t respond at first, not to say anything, not even to look at Ronan, and so Ronan was considering just leaving, letting Adam work out whatever it was on his own. “I can’t kill his demons,” Adam had said once, and it was true the other way around too. But Ronan didn’t want to go.

Then Adam looked at him -- didn’t stop pacing, didn’t stop worrying at his hair, but looked at him. “Yes,” he said. Then, “But stay.”

Ronan stayed where he was for a moment, nodded a little, took a step further into the room. Adam stopped his pacing, dropped his hands to his sides, stayed where he was. Like he was waiting for Ronan to do something. Ronan wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do.

Things with Adam had been weird. Also not weird. Ronan didn’t know what they were, exactly. Whatever it was, it was intense but also easy, chaotic but also peaceful, confusing but also natural -- in turn both solemn and the most fun Ronan had had in a long time. Contradictions. The most sense that anything made in Ronan’s life.

He walked over to Adam, allowing his instincts to lead him, and watched Adam’s face. The other boy often gave more away there than he seemed to realize. Right now his brow was furrowed, his eyes heavy in the way that meant he was tired in that to-the-bones kind of way. He met Ronan’s gaze -- he did that a lot now -- but there was something shuttered about his own. He was glad Ronan was here, felt relief in it (Ronan could see that in the way his lips were parted) but he was pushing back whatever he’d been dealing with before Ronan came in (that was in the tension of his shoulders, down the muscles of his arms and into the fists at his sides).

Ronan thought about taking Adam’s hands in his, but didn’t; thought about kissing him, but didn’t. In the end he just leaned close and rested his forehead against Adam’s, because that was the easiest thing and it felt the most honest.

For a moment, they just breathed. Ronan put his hand on the back of Adam’s neck so that he could feel the tension leaving him, dissipating from beneath Ronan’s palm. It was calming, grounding, electrifying all at once. Touching Adam always felt like that, no matter how many times and how many ways he did it.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Adam asked, without moving away and without opening his eyes (he had closed them, at some point, while they were standing there).

“Nope,” Ronan said.

“Want to not-sleep here?” Adam asked.

Ronan grinned, unafraid of how happy he probably looked because Adam couldn’t see him, and because he trusted this more and more all the time. “Yep,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, but happy.

Now Adam was smiling too, and Ronan knew because he had never closed his eyes. It had been hard not to stare at Adam before. Being able to look so closely was a privilege Ronan didn’t intend to give up as long as he could still get away with it.

Adam kissed him first. Adam usually kissed him first, although Ronan was getting a little bit better about initiating things. But Adam was so good at it, so good at pressing close to Ronan’s body and touching his mouth to Ronan’s so softly, like every time was the first time, and it felt the way Chainsaw had felt that first night when Ronan brought her out of his dreams: small and new and miraculous.

Adam put both his hands on Ronan’s shoulderblades, trailed them down until they were resting in the dip of his back, and opened his mouth against Ronan’s.

Ronan could control himself sometimes. This was not one of those times -- not now that he knew Adam wanted this as badly as he did. Ronan kissed Adam a little harder, a little closer, a little more persistent -- and then a little harder than that. His hand was still at the back of Adam’s neck and he used it to pull him even closer (not to keep him there, though, never so tight that he couldn’t move away, if he wanted to).

Adam’s hands tightened in Ronan’s shirt. Ronan thought he could feel Adam’s heart beating, that was how close they were, but it might have just been his own, or maybe both. Either way, it was beating fast, and it made Ronan both want to draw the moment out longer and pick up the pace.

They were kissing in earnest now -- in earnest and earnestly -- and Adam made this little sound, a sound like he didn’t even know he was making it, like it escaped from his throat because he was already too far gone to control it -- Adam, who desperately attempted to control his every action.

And Ronan was made weak by it, he knew it and he hardly cared, because Adam was leading him back to the bed and Ronan was perfectly fucking content to follow him there.

Adam’s hands found the edge of Ronan’s shirt and teased at it, only just brushing Ronan’s skin every once in a while, until Ronan made an impatient sound and Adam laughed against his mouth, which sent a rippling thrill from Ronan’s chest and down his legs. He could have taken off his own shirt, but there was too much of him that wanted Adam to do it.

Finally, after what Adam no doubt considered a reasonable amount of teasing, his fingers hooked under Ronan’s shirt and pulled it off over his head, dropping it to the floor at the same time as he gently pushed Ronan down onto the bed.

It had been a while now, since that first kiss. Ronan had spent countless nights like this with Adam already, just kissing and touching and letting their bodies take over, but it hadn’t once gotten old. It was simple, yet exhilarating -- another contradiction, and a perfect one.

As Ronan sat down on the bed, Adam followed him, sitting with his knees on either side of Ronan’s hips, and suddenly Ronan was aware of how obvious his heavy breathing was now that his shirt had been removed and tossed aside. He could at least even the playing field. Adam’s hands were on either side of Ronan’s face, resting against his jaw, but he was compelled to move them when Ronan pulled his t-shirt off over his head, running his hands along Adam’s body as they went.

With Adam’s shirt gone, the other boy seemed to decide that it was time to pick up the pace. He trailed his hands up to Ronan’s shoulders, his touch so light that it almost tickled, and then, with gentle pressure, he pressed Ronan’s back down to the mattress.

At this point Ronan was lost. Adam laid down over him and Ronan concentrated all efforts on just being there: open, aware, and utterly willing.  
Adam seemed happy enough to oblige him. He moved one hand to curl around the side of Ronan’s throat, thumb tucked behind his ear, which somehow felt both debilitating and enlightening. This allowed him to tip Ronan up to him, so that he had a better angle when he pulled Ronan’s lip between his teeth. Ronan arched up into Adam, which he later thought the boy must have planned, because at that exact moment, Adam pressed his hips down against Ronan’s and that was it. Everything else be damned -- latin, Glendower, even Cabeswater. In that moment, Ronan was alive for the feeling of Adam moving his hips down and against his.

He tried to concentrate on Adam’s hands, to ground himself in the moment. Otherwise he was afraid he’d get lost in it, and before he knew it, it would be over. But if he concentrated on the slow drag of Adam’s palms up his chest to his shoulders, on the way they could somehow press, firm, into his shoulders but then be feather-light-gentle when they ghosted over the skin of his throat. And finally the feeling of his right hand curled at the base of Ronan’s neck as his left moved to grip his hip.

But grounded or not, Ronan began to lose focus when everything seemed to deepen suddenly. Adam’s grip on his hip tightened, and at the same time the hand at the back of Ronan’s neck melted down into what could only truthfully be called a caress.

Ronan’s own hands rested at Adam’s sides, and so he felt the exact moment when Adam’s breathing grew heavy, ribs shifting, rising and falling, beneath Ronan’s too-hot palms. The press of his hips grew more urgent until Ronan couldn’t concentrate on his hands anymore -- couldn’t concentrate on anything but the swelling crush of emotions he didn’t particularly want to face.

So he didn’t face them. He pulled Adam down onto him, his hands gentle claws, allowing himself to melt into physicality. Everything was Adam, or more specifically, the way Adam felt, the way Adam made him feel.

+++

Ronan didn’t exactly fall asleep, but he grew aware again sometime later. His head rested on the pillow, Adam’s hand absent. Adam himself was beside him on the bed, head leaning against Ronan’s shoulder.

It felt like coming back from a dream, entering slowly back into himself. But when he did, Adam was there, and he was real. This wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. This had happened enough now (as well as other things -- things like Adam reaching over the vacant middle seat in the back of the Pig to wrap Ronan’s fingers in his own, things like Adam leaning close to him late at night to press a kiss to Ronan’s hairline) that Ronan knew that this was going to continue, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was or how it would go one from here.

He breathed deep and it felt like coming up for air after nearly drowning. Adam took his hand.

Adam rubbed the pads of his fingers over Ronan’s knuckles, back and forth in a way that was at once soothing and stirring. His fingers found a scab on one of Ronan’s knuckles and they paused there, gently prodding and circling, like he wanted to map it out, an island in the expanse of Ronan’s skin. Almost unconsciously, it seemed to Ronan, Adam started picking at it, just little flicks of his fingernail. It didn’t hurt and even if it had, Ronan wouldn’t have stopped him.

Ronan didn’t watch, but he could feel the scab begin to pull up along its edges. Ronan looked at Adam’s face. His eyes were closed, brow furrowed. Whatever he’d been facing when Ronan arrived in the doorway was returning to him. Still he picked absently at Ronan’s scab.

To take a breath was painful when Adam was leaning against him like this. Every piece of Ronan’s body screamed at him not to disturb the boy resting his head on Ronan’s shoulder. But he made himself breathe, just so he’d have the air to say something. “You can let me in,” he scraped out, and then wished he were closer to a wall -- to hide himself against or to hit with something -- hating himself a little bit for touching this miraculous thing. 

Adam didn’t look up at him, though he settled somehow, like he was coming back into himself. “I thought I did,” he said. Now he did look up at Ronan, and he was smiling, his hair still mussed from running his hands through it earlier, and Ronan would stay here forever. “Unless you meant that you want to pick my scabs too.”

“You know what I meant,” Ronan said, even though he didn’t know that it was true. Not necessarily true didn’t make it a lie.

Adam didn’t say anything, just hummed a little, like he did understand. He pushed himself up and there was a moment of panic when Ronan thought he was leaving the bed -- panic because the last thing in the world he wanted was to drive Adam away, not now that he had him here, in places and moments like this.

But Adam didn’t leave, just moved a little further up the bed. “I know,” he said. He rested his forehead just above Ronan’s ear, as though they could pass understanding directly through their minds (and hey, stranger things had happened, lately). They stayed like that for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone gave me such lovely encouragement last time -- and I love the characters so much -- that I just had to return to them. I wanted to try writing from Ronan's POV this time, which was much more difficult than I anticipated. He comes across a little squishy, I know, and I can't decide if it's a mistake on my part, or if I wrote him that way because it's really how I perceive him. I suppose I like to think he's squishy beneath the sarcasm (and that Adam lives somewhere in him that's deeper than that). Anyway, as always, all thoughts are appreciated!


End file.
